Harassment Beijing's "grey area tactics" on Taiwan: rain of drones to provoke the Taiwanese army
Report The New Taiwan Strait Crisis, Explained in Five Charts
The US
announced this Friday a package of military assistance to
Taiwan
worth 1,100 million dollars and that will serve the island, whose sovereignty
China claims, to reinforce its missile and radar system, a
State Department
spokesman reported
.
The announcement comes at a time of particular tension around Taiwan with China's military maneuvers near the island and after the controversial visit of the Speaker of the US House of Representatives,
Nancy Pelosi
.
For its part, China threatened the United States with "countermeasures" if it does not cancel the arms sales package, which "gravely endangers" relations between
Washington
and
Beijing
.
China will take "legitimate and necessary countermeasures in light of the development of the situation," said Liu Pengyu
, a spokesman for the Chinese embassy in Washington
.
The aid package is the largest granted to Taiwan by the
Joe Biden administration
to date and includes 60 Harpoon-type missile systems to fire against ships and 100 AIM-9 Sidewinder short-range missiles, as well as financial support for a radar system.
The aid must still be endorsed by the United States Congress, where Taiwan has the support of both Democrats and Republicans, so approval is a mere formality.
The aforementioned State Department spokesman defended that military aid is necessary for Taiwan "to maintain its ability to defend itself" and recalled that, since 2010, the US Government has notified Congress of the delivery of more than
35,000 million in military aid to Taiwan
.
The aid, the spokesman argued, complies with the "one China" principle that Beijing imposes as the basis of its ties with any country.
This policy means that the only Chinese government that the US must recognize is the one based in Beijing, which distances it
from Taiwan's independence aspirations
.
Biden has reiterated on several occasions his respect for that principle that made the US break diplomatic ties with
Taipei
almost half a century ago and establish them with Beijing.
In return, the United States adopted the
Taiwan Relations Act of
1979, in which it promised to provide military aid to the island but did not make it clear whether it would intervene in the event of a Chinese attack, a policy dubbed "strategic ambiguity."
For its part, China claims sovereignty over the island and considers Taiwan a rebel province since the
Kuomintang
nationalists withdrew there in 1949 after losing the civil war against the communists.
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